ESXi 6.0 Image for Intel NUC

ESXi 6.0 requires a little tweak to run without problems on an Intel NUC. This post explains how to create a customized ESXi 6 ISO for your 4th and 5th gen. Intel NUC. The images can be used to do a fresh install or upgrade a NUC to VMware ESXi 6.0.

The Image works for the following NUCs:

Intel NUC D54250WYK

Intel NUC D34010WYK

Intel NUC D54250WYKH

Intel NUC D34010WYKH

Intel NUC5i7RYH

Intel NUC5i5RYH

Intel NUC5i5MYHE

Intel NUC5i5RYK

Intel NUC5i3RYH

Intel NUC5i3MYHE

Intel NUC5i3RYK

Use one of the following guides to create a customized ISO for Intel NUC

107 Comments.

Thanks four your great Tuts.
i tried to create my own image with the ESXi Customiser and it did not work, because there was an exception thrown, that it does only work with Version 4.X or 5.X.
I made a clean reinstall and installed the sata driver from the depot and now it works. But not fine! And here is my question to you:
The Performance on my Nuc i5 is pretty poor. Every access to my storage is VERY VERY slow. Is this a NUC-Driver problem or a ESXi 6 problem?

I`m in the last step of building my home-lab (for a Cisco course).
Connecting via serial (telnet://x.x.x.x:9001) to one of the VMs. I noticed that with the current license that is not possible, it has been blocked.

Is there a other way to connect to the Cisco Lab to the console. I`f been looking around but nothing that could help me connecting to one of the VMs.

I was able to get ESXi 6.0 installed, although when I try and add the host to vCenter it fails. I deployed a vCenter Appliance onto the host... I'm going to set up a small cluster with NFS shared storage on some nuc5i5ryh boxes.

Looks like the problem comes from the BIOS data returned to esxcfg-info...

Has anybody had an issue with connecting to your ESXi Sever via VMWare Fusion?
I build the ESXi install with both the HDD and NIC drivers on windows using the powershell script. I just get a "Loading" message when trying to connect.

I was able to connect to my 4th Gen i5 running ESXi 6.0 on the same network and machine. Would anybody know of an issue with installation/drivers that would prevent my VMWare Fusion from connecting to the server to manage VM's and view Memory and CPU Using?

FYI: I am able to connecting using the Legacy C++ application on windows

Am trying to get ESXi 6 working on the 5th Generation Celeron NUC5CPYH. CPU is a Celeron N3050 and NIC is a realtek 8169 (or 8168?).

I've tried adding the net55-r8168 and net51-r8169 offline bundles, adding ignoreHeadless=TRUE to the boot options, and various sizes for the IGP graphics memory in BIOS, enable & disable ACPI in BIOS, flashed latest BIOS, but it always hangs at "Relocating Modules and starting up the kernel"

Has anyone managed to get ESXi (any version) working on NUC5CPYH or NUC5PPYH ?

SUCCESS with the Celeron NUC5CPYH & ESXi 5.5U3a & ESXi 6.0U1a !!!
Created ISO using "Create ISO with ESXi-Customizer (v-front.de)" method above, to include the net55 driver for the Realtek NIC.
Then used VMware workstation to install the ISO onto a USB flash drive.

Updated NUC BIOS Firmware to latest version 0047.

Loaded BIOS defaults after updating BIOS.

Boot ESXi from USB Flash drive inserted into one of the USB3 ports

The trick is that when it looks like its frozen during startup and says "Relocating Modules and starting up the kernel" it is actually still booting correctly in the background but the ESXi direct console user interface (DCUI)is not displayed on the monitor. I think this is a display card issue that when ESXi starts the kernel & switches display resolution/frequency, the NUC display hardware refuses to display it.

If ethernet cable is connected and you have a DHCP server available, it will obtain a DHCP IP, and you'll be able to connect vSphere Client to it.

The next issue is that the Sata-xahci Offline Bundle DOES NOT include the right PCI ID for the SATA hardware in this NUC (8086:22a3), so I used this script from an SSH session to fix that;

Have NUC5PPYH booted custom ISO with net55-r8168 & sata drivers. Error message: "Relocating Modules and starting up te kernel". Network is up and has address from DHCP (can ping from other systems). Trying to connect to it using vSphere Client, but getting errors only. Any suggestions please?

Then, this is VERY important, the disk in the NUC must be completely empty! no partitions at all!

Now insert the USB Drive in the NUC and boot from it, as soon as you see the ESXi Installer screen hit the "SHIFT+O"
you should now see a prompt "runweasel"
Add this, "ks=usb:/ks.cfg" (without the ""). So it should look like this "runweasel ks=usb:/ks.cfg"
Now hit the Enter on your keyboard and leave it running for like 10 minutes or so.
It might look it's stuck again at the Relocating Modules and starting up the kernel, but it is NOT, it is using the ks.cfg as a install-script.
After a while the NUC will reboot, and you have a working ESXi Server, you only have to find out it's IP Address and you can connect to it using your VMware vSphere Client with username "root" and password "mypassword"

Followed exactly as you have mentioned but it's just getting stuck at "Relocating Modules and starting up the kernel". It's not rebooting or getting any mac from the DHCP server. Moreover I don't see any HDD or USB activity, if any data transfer happens between the usb and NUC I will be able to see USB light blinking, but that is not happening in this case. Any other idea? I have removed all the partitions from hard disk. Did you try this on the NUC hardware or on VMware workstation? I am trying to install this one more time and will keep it running till tomorrow morning. If I don't get an IP address for the NUC, I will consider that it didn't work.

I figured out what the problem is, apparently the forum software here changes -- (2 dashes) to 1 large dash.
I've put the ks.cfg from my working USB stick on pastebin.
you can find it here http://pastebin.com/M2YF2Whk

I tried with the new KS script but still no luck. I don't see any hard disk or USB activity after Relocating modules message. It doesn't restart even after waiting for a while. More over I have statically (sticky) assigned ip (via DHCP) for the NUC mac address but no luck. I am using a SATA hard disk. Do we need to make any changes in the BIOS setting? Is there a way to see the console messages? Can you share your ISO image so that I can try with that aswell?

Thanks Mark and James, I moved out from installing ESXI as things were getting too much complicated and testing is not reaching anywhere. So I finally managed to install Proxmox (an opensource alternative) on my NUC and installation was so easy. Moreover there is no need to patch drivers as it's based on the latest Debian release and almost all the drivers comes pre installed.

Managing the VMs are also now easy as we don't need any separate client for host management.

Actually,
Bobby advice was the best for me, after several long hours i waste trying to install ESXI, in my Celeron NUC5CPYH, i tried Proxmox and it worked! (i had a hiccup re doing the usb as DD and restoring the bios to default EFI) without any major issues.

I success with ESXi 6.0u1b on Celeron NUC5CPYH.
Create iso image with net55-r8168-8.039.01-napi-offline_bundle.zip and sata-xahci-1.34-1-offline_bundle.zip (this bundle includes 8086:22a3) by ESXi-Customizer.
And flash iso image to a USB flash drive, put the following text saved as ks.cfg in the root directory of the same USB flash drive.

Boot ESXi from the USB flash drive, and press Shift+O during startup. Append the following boot option and press Enter.

ks=usb:/ks.cfg

“Relocating Modules and starting up kernel”is still shown, but install is continued (Check HDD access lamp). When install finish, reboot automatically.
Wait to complete reboot, and connect by vSphere client to the IP address by DHCP with the following account.
(If you want to use fixed address, change the args of 'network' in ks.cfg)

Tried this but not installing, still getting stuck at “Relocating Modules and starting up kernel” and nothing happens. Hard disk light doesnt lit up, think it's idle. I tried with 2nd method mentioned in this "how to" by creating ISO's twice (to add the VIBs). I am on the latest UEFI BIOS firmware. LAN is not getting any IP address from DHCP server. Any help? Can you share your ISO somewhere? Thanks in advance.

I managed to get it installed to the local disk, but it's still stuck at "Relocating modules and starting up the kernel.." during boot up. I don't see it getting IP from DHCP either, any ideas what else to try?

1) I Built a USB installer stick following the ESXi-Customizer method with both the NIC and SATA offline zips
2) Boot the USB stick on another machine (I booted it on a VM) so that it doesn't get stuck on the "Relocating modules"
3) Install to the USB stick itself (You can do this since the installer files are all in memory)
4) Setup the IP and everything else you need now you can see the screen :)
5) Shutdown and boot it on the NUC5CPYH
6) It will still be stuck on the “Relocating modules and starting up kernel” (I don't think there is any way to solve that issue) but for me after a few min everything was working and I could connect via vsphere :)

Glad that you got it working, but how can you move the installation the hard disk after installing it on USB?
Since this was taking up time and nothing goes in the right direction I was thinking about installing Proxmox (opensource vmware alternative). Please let me know if you manage to install that on hard disk. By the by I am having a 5PPYH NUC.

I plan to install ESXi 6.0U1A on my NUC5i5RYH.
I've downloaded the trial image VMware-VMvisor-Installer-6.0.0.update01-3029758.x86_64.iso. I wonder what the trial mode do ? Will my ESXi still working after the 60 days of trial period ? Is there a way to remove this trial period ?

Thank you for the quick answer, I figure out where to find the license key (with a special URL). I don't why it didn't appears before.
I made the custom ISO and burn it (using dd command) to an USB key. On the NUC I tried to boot on this USB Key but it didn't work. The NUC try to boot from network.
When I mount the USB drive, i find the boot file (/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI).
Is there anything special to do on the NUC to boot to the key ?

Do you get this message during installation? If yes there should be a better error message in logfiles. Press Alt-F1, login with root (no password) and check the log (/var/log/vmkernel.log for example).

I made custom ESXi 6.0u1 iso whih sata-xahci.zip included.
I can install it in VM Ware fusion and run it from USB stick on my NUC without any issue.
But when I burn the iso on my usb stick (using dd if=..iso of=/dev/disk bs=1m) and tried to boot from it (with EFI boot enabled or disabled) but it doesn't work at all. Seem's like the usb key is not bootable.
Anyone can help ?

Depends on what you want to do with your NUC. I am always installing ESXi to an USB stick. This allows me to quickly change versions (multiple sticks) or play around with products like Pernixdata or VSAN. When you want to use it as home server only its OK to install it to the SSD (it uses the remaining capacity as VMFS datastore). When you want to test stuff I think the USB flash drive installation is better.

I tried with rufus and it works, it seems that the ISO contain an old menu.c32. Thank you again.
Can you change ESXi version and keep datastore and VM ? Moreover need the usb stick to have good write speed (sandisk extreme) ? Or a basic 16GB stick with 10MB/s at write and 80MB/s at read is enough ?

Datastores and VMs are persistent when you change ESXi versions. This applies to both, when you Update/Downgrade an ESXi, or when you reinstall it (Or change the USB drive where it is installed to). The only exception is when you have a newer VM Hardware version than your ESXi supports (Eg. you create a VM with Virtual HW 11. This VM can only run with ESXi 6.0).
A basic USB stick is enough. (I'm also using crappy old 4GB sticks. - Homelab use only of course, not in production) ESXi runs completely in memory (The hypervisor size is only ~300 MB). According to speed, the only affected part is when the ESXi boots, but you won't notice a large difference there.

Thanks for all your explanations. I choose using a USB stick for ESXI installation. This works like a charm.
I have a last question concerning plugging an USB drive to a guest OS (debian 8). When I want to add an USB controller I add a weird warning : "This controller is not supported for this guest operating system". But when I connect the USB device, everything works (maybe not at full speed, I write nearly at 30MiB/s). What is the best way to add an external USB 3.0 drive connected to a guest OS ?

Great tutorial, building the ISO with this information was a breeze. Am planning to get a NUC6i5 when it releases, to replace an older router/firewall (watchguard) by virtualised pfsense. Been playing with a NIC5i3 in the mean time.

I would love it if it could also replace the HTPC at the same time, from what I've read it should be possible, but I haven't found much information on the topic, I don't think it's something that will work out of the box.

Has any1 got an idea on how to get GPU passthrough (intel gvt) to work? I'm able to see the video and audio device in advanced hardware settings as:
- 0000:00:02.0 Intel corp VGA compatible controller
- 0000:00:03.0 Intel corp Audio device

At the bottom of this screen it states "The device is running in passthrough mode". But I have no idea how I can assign this to a VM.

What happens now is when the PCI devices (audio and/or video) are connected to the VM (Win 8/10 x64 client) is that the ESXi installation on the NUC (currently 5i3RYH) freezes completely and requires a hard shutdown.

I am running ESXi 6.0 on a NUC. It has been running very well except that I have noticed that the fan keeps cycling every 60 seconds. It will run for about 5-10 seconds, then either turn off or idle down, then 60 seconds later it cycles to high speed. I have checked, it does not look like a temperature issue. I am currently running only 4 VM's, 3 CentOS servers and one Linux workstation.

Method number 2 worked for me. Luckily the ESXi-Customizer is still available. It is unsupported and tells you to use the Power-Cli tool instead. It did however work. I could not get the Power-Cli tool to work, it would not take the "Add-EsxSoftwareDepot" command. Probably something missing on my end when I installed powershell3 or something.
I am running the NUC NUC5i7RYH, and was able to get the esx installer to see the Sata drive, flash drive, and USB. I used the latest package from the Eval Download page.

I've been slowly getting into the ESXi realm in fits and starts for the last year. This article was a huge benefit for me when I first setup my NUC5i5MYHE. I'm looking into updating to the latest release. Is it best practice to generate a new install ISO and update that way, or can I upload the latest patch and update via this manner: